


Honey, I shrunk the Winchesters

by Zara_Zee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_reversebang, Gen, S9, bunker!fic, case!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Goddammit, Sam!” Dean swung an arm. “We’ve got Crowley in the basement, a bunch of damaged angels topside with their tape measures out, Kevin’s drunk, Cas’s God knows where, and we are eight freakin’ inches tall! Reading the small print before going all ‘Honey, I shrunk the Winchesters’, would’ve been a good idea, Mr Stanford Law School!”</p>
<p>In which Sam and Dean follow the white rabbit and find out just how deep the rabbit-hole really goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honey, I shrunk the Winchesters

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: If you recognize them, they are not mine. The SPN characters belong to the CW and Eric Kripke…I’m just borrowing them, for fun, not profit, and promise to return them in more-or-less original condition once I’ve finished playing…
> 
> Spoilers: EP. 9.04, Slumber Party
> 
> Warnings: Show level violence, misappropriation of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, spiders
> 
> Author's Note: This is my first time participating in Livejournal's spn_reversebang and it has been so much fun! Artist amber1960 has been a joy to work with and came up with several additional pieces of art for the story, which I love to pieces. One is a little scary and one is just too yummy for words...I'm sure y'all will be able to work out which is which! ;) Thanks to the community mods for running this challenge and to all the artists on my flist whose enthusiasm for this challenge really made me want to sign up! I'm so glad I did. :)
> 
> Master Art Post is here: http://amber1960.livejournal.com/183271.html

 

[ ](http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/Aethelflaede/media/reversebanging/whiterabbit_zpsefe3ffbc.jpg.html)

 

“Ow! Son of a bitch!”

Dean shook out his hand and glared at the thin layer of viscous green goo that had just oozed out of the cupboard where he kept the fry pans and given his fingers an electric shock. That Wicked Witch of the West bitch had really done a number on his kitchen. He’d been finding bits of residual magic for a week and that stuff had quite a bite.

“You okay, Dean?”

Dean jumped and caught his head on the edge of the kitchen bench. “Ow! Goddamn it, Sam!”

Sam was leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. He grinned when Dean rubbed at his head and Dean glared at him. “I thought you were up to your neck in Oz lore?”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah. I just came across a little-known passage about the reproductive proclivities of Howler Monkeys; figured it was time for a break.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like they kept all the good stuff out of the published stories,” he rinsed his hand under the tap, ignoring Sam’s disgruntled mutterings about reality and porn. “I was just about to make bacon cheeseburgers,” he said. “You want one? Or…” he crossed to the clunky old Frigidaire and pulled open the door, “we have eggs and tomatoes too. I could make you an omelet with a side of bacon, if you want?”

When he turned back to look at Sam, his brother was wearing a fond expression on his face that Dean didn’t like one bit. “What?” he growled.

Sam broke out his dimples. “Look at you, goin’ all 1950s Housewife. It’s adorable!”

“I have a wooden spoon,” Dean said calmly, producing the implement from somewhere behind himself with a flourish. “And I ain’t afraid to use it.”

Sam held his hands up, palms out in a gesture of submission.  “An omelet sounds great. You want some help?”

Dean regarded his brother for a moment, gauging his seriousness, and then nodded. “Sure. You can beat the eggs.” He turned away from Sam to get the mixing bowl and when he opened the cupboard where it was kept a flood of green goo gushed out of the cupboard, drenching him from head to foot.  “ _Son of a bitch_! I freakin’ _hate_ witches!” Dean wiped the goo from his eyes and spat it from his mouth.

“Uh, Dean?”

“What?” Dean glared up at Sam.

And up.

And up.

And…what the hell?

“Dude!” Sam’s voice held a slight note of hysteria. “You’re shrinking!”

\--

Dean paced the wooden table top, watching with unconcealed irritation as Sam pored over a weighty, leather-bound Oz tome.  

“Anything?” he demanded.

Sam sighed. “No, Dean, in the two and a half minutes since the last time you asked, I haven’t found anything that could help us reverse the shrinking.”

“Goddamn it, Sam! You gotta read faster!” Dean kicked at the base of the table lamp and then hopped away, rubbing at his toes. Why couldn’t he have been shrunk with his boots on?

Sam’s look was a combination of pity and amusement. “It could’ve been worse, Dean. You could’ve shrunk down to microscopic size. At least you stopped at doll size,” he inclined his head and looked at Dean with a pensive expression. “You know, you look like one of those Ken dolls.”

“I will stab you,” said Dean.

He turned to the big black ashtray in the center of the table, now filled with paperclips, pen caps, rubber bands and packets of post-it notes, and grabbed hold of a paperclip, which he began to un-bend.

“Found something!” Sam said.

Dean dropped the paperclip. “Really?”

“No. But if you try to stab me with a paperclip, I’m gonna pick you up and put you on top of that bookshelf. Just sit tight, Ken, and let me do my thing.”

Dean stared at Sam for a moment and then sat himself down on the edge of the ashtray and put his head in his hands. His throat was sore from having to shout everything at Sam in order for the giant Sasquatch to hear him, and he was still aching all over from the ordeal of shrinking. On top of that, he was feeling completely humiliated. Earlier, when he’d finally stopped getting smaller, Sam had picked him up and carried him over to the table top. Without Sam’s help, he wouldn’t be able to get down. He trusted his little brother without question, but the degree to which he was now reliant on him was a little scary. The ribbing, he could take. He would’ve been more concerned if Sam hadn’t taken the opportunity to tease and insult him. But a Ken doll? _Really_? Dean’s eyes widened as a truly frightening thought crossed his mind and he surreptitiously lowered his hand to his groin to make sure that his boys were still there; he sighed in relief when he confirmed that he wasn’t as junkless as a Ken doll.

Above him, Sam cleared his throat. “We’ll figure this out,” he said. “I promise.”

\--

Two hours later and Sam was regretting his promise. There was nothing in the Oz lore about residual magic, nothing about the witch’s magic, period, except for the repeatedly stated fact that if you got zapped by her, you died. Sam rubbed at his forehead, trying to soothe the brain-buzzing that was demanding his attention. Charlie had been zapped, he knew she had.  Maybe the witch hadn’t been at full strength after seventy-five years in some kind of suspended animation. Or maybe…had she zapped Charlie before or after Dean shot her with a poppy bullet? Dean had been a little vague on the sequence of events. And then there was that name Dean had shouted, Zeke. The brain-buzzing intensified and Sam closed his eyes and regulated his breathing, letting wave after wave of calmness and strength wash over him. He couldn’t deny that he was feeling better in every way than he had for a long time, but his spidey-sense kept tingling. Or maybe that was just paranoia; part of the same set of fears that kept him from making a real home in the bunker.

“Sammy?” Dean’s voice was small and tinny. Sam opened his eyes and stared down at his doll-sized brother who was standing on the pages of the book Sam had been reading, peering up at him uncertainly.

Sam cleared his throat and attempted a smile. “Think we’re gonna have to research a little farther afield. I’m gonna head down into the archives,” he paused and ran a hand through his hair. “Is there, uh, anything you want me to do for you before I head down? Food? Or you want me to put a DVD on for you?”

Dean ran a hand over his jaw and then nodded. “Food sounds good.”

Sam left his brother sitting on the kitchen bench with a plate of ham, cheese and bread, cut up into really, really small pieces, and a forlorn expression on his tiny face.

Sam’s first port of call was the Archives. The Men of Letters filing system was easy to work with. It used a standard subject filing system, for example, A1 for Cryptozoology, A1.1 for Ahuizotl, A1.2 for Banshees and so forth. The first time Sam had ventured down into the catacombs, it had taken him a few hours to figure out that although most of the file names were in English, some were in Latin and some were in Enochian, and if there was a system to determine which language should be used, Sam hadn’t yet worked it out. Sam didn’t find anything relevant filed under Magic or _Magus_ , nor under Shrinking or _Incididunt_. There was no file for Other Worlds or _Alios Mundos_ , but when he tried _Mtif Londoh_ (Enochian) he scored pay dirt. Apparently the Men of Letters held keys to, not only Oz, but also Wonderland, Narnia, The Dreamlands, Pern and Earthsea. Sam very nearly geeked all over himself, but he reined himself in before he could start planning an Other World holiday to see some real dragons, and focused on the task at hand. Maybe an Archmage from Earthsea would be able to counter the Wicked Witch’s magic; the file on Earthsea listed the box and vault where the Earthsea key was kept. Sam made a note. He scanned the synopsizes of each Other World and the lists of artifacts from each world that were held in the vaults and when he glanced over the list of Wonderland artifacts, the word _shrink_ leapt out at him: Vault 12, Shelf 28, Box 39—1 x bottle of Drink Me Potion. Known effects: causes a person to shrink. 1 x small Eat Me cake. Known effects: causes a person to grow.

“Yahtzee!” Sam scribbled down the vault, shelf and box number and hurried to retrieve the artifact that would see Dean restored to his proper size.

\--

The chunks of ham and cheese that Sam had cut for him were as big as Dean’s hands and without the benefit of utensils he had no choice but to hold them up to his face and gnaw on them. It was…undignified as fuck was what it was.  And even worse, on his last shopping trip Dean had brought home a Mississippi Mud pie and Sam hadn’t even attempted to cut him a tiny slice of that. Dean wiped his cheesy hands on the back of his jeans and sighed. If he were going to get any pie today, he was probably going to have to stand in the damn pie dish and tear chunks off of it with his bare hands. Hmm. Dean inclined his head and looked at the refrigerator.

It wasn’t actually all that hard, getting down from the bench. Dean lay on his belly and lowered himself off the ledge, down onto the wide chrome handle of the highest kitchen drawer. He then lowered himself from one drawer handle to the next until he was down on the ground. His plan was to break the door seal on the fridge with his hands and then use his whole body weight to push the door open.  From there, he should be able to climb the shelves to the pie without too much difficulty; the one hazard would be keeping the door from closing on him. He would have to prop it open with something. Maybe Sammy’s big-ass tub of natural yoghurt. Dean pulled a face. That stuff was nasty.  He ran across the kitchen floor, intent on his destination, deep in thought, and as hyper-vigilant as a hunter always was, which meant that he noticed the armored hunk of scuttling legs and waving antennae in his peripheral vision immediately. A cockroach. The size of a freaking Rottweiler.  You know, comparatively speaking.

Dean hadn’t even been wearing shoes when he’d gotten shrunk, let alone a side arm or a knife. Were cockroaches carnivorous? Should he be worried? The cockroach tilted its head to one side and wiggled its antennae, and okay, that was enough for Dean. He slowly unbuckled his belt and pulled it out through the loops. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was something. The cockroach stepped forward and Dean snapped the belt at it.  It wasn’t really easy to read the facial expressions of a cockroach, particularly when you were trying pretty damn hard to avoid looking at the fugly, shudder-inducing thing in the first place, but Dean kind of thought the cockroach seemed a little surprised. It took another tentative step forward and Dean snapped at it again. The cockroach froze. And then it turned around and ran, fast, straight into a small hole in the wall.

Dean pumped his fist. “Yeah, that’s right, bitch,” he crowed. “Roaches check in, they don’t check out!”

And then the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he just knew that something even worse than a cockroach was standing behind him. He spun around just in time to dive sideways, narrowly avoiding the descending fangs of a big-ass spider. Dean wasn’t an arachnid expert by any means, but he’d helped Sammy do a project on spiders back when the kid was in middle school and if he was remembering right, this was an American Wolf Spider. And if he’d thought the cockroach was fugly, that was nothing compared to the horror of the spider. Too many eyes, too many legs and, fuck! Dean snapped the belt at it as it attacked him again. He managed to roll out from under, scrambled to his feet and followed after the cockroach, into what he hoped was the relative safety of a disused mouse hole.

 

 

“What the Hell, Men of Letters,” he grumbled, “You create the most powerful place on Earth, you ward it against any evil ever created, but you can’t keep the damn bugs out!”

\--

Sam arrived in the kitchen, small case containing Drink Me potion and Eat Me cake in hand, just in time to see his brother dash into a hole in the wall with a wolf spider hot on his tail.

“Dean!” he shouted. “Dean! What the Hell, man? Get out in the open!”

There was no response.

Crap.

Maybe there was some insecticide in one of the cupboards? Sam smacked himself on the head. No. He couldn’t spray poison into the hole, not when Dean was only eight inches tall. He could make him really sick.

Why had Dean run into that mouse hole? Was he already hurt? Had the spider bitten him? There was nothing for it; Sam was going to have to go in after him.

Sam set the case down on the kitchen bench and unlatched it. He took the Drink Me potion out of the case and uncorked it. He lifted it to his lips and then paused. If he was going after a spider, he was going to need a weapon. When Dean had shrunk, his clothes had too; and as far as Sam could remember, so had Alice’s. If he was holding a weapon, would that also shrink down? Sam couldn’t see why not. He quickly grabbed a couple of big knives from the second drawer down and held them tightly in one hand while he drank down the potion.

Shrinking was weird. It hurt and it was disorienting, leaving him dizzy and nauseous, but finally, he was comparable in size to Dean. And the knives had indeed shrunk down with him.

Sam took off at a flat run. He found Dean deep in the mouse hole dueling with the spider, which was up on its rear legs, waving its fore legs frantically as Dean snapped at it with his belt like some kind of bizarre lion tamer.

Sam sank the knife into the spider’s back. It tried to twist around and attack him, which gave him the opportunity to slash at its legs with the other knife. The spider fell to the ground, its torn legs curling up, as it spasmed and twitched before finally, falling still.

“You okay, Dean?”

“Peachy.” Dean peered through the dark at him. “Oh man. You got witch goop on you too, huh?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Not exactly. I found Drink Me potion.”

Dean stared at him. “And you…?”

“Drank it. Yeah.”

Dean edged past the dead spider and made his way to Sam’s side. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but _what the fuck, Sam_? You were supposed to be figuring out a way to make me normal-sized again, not shrinking yourself!”

Sam gestured at the spider with his knife. “You were gonna get eaten! Besides, I got Eat Me cake out there too. Enough to make us both big again.”

“Eat Me cake,” Dean echoed. “Okay then. Lead on Dormouse.”

They walked out to the kitchen in silence.

“Where’s this cake, then?”

Sam rubbed a hand across his chin. “I left it up on the bench.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Genius move.”

“Well I didn’t want to leave it on the ground in case a mouse or something got to it. Besides, you got down from up there, so we should be able to get back up.”

The climb up was tougher than the climb down. Pulling yourself up a vertical incline with your bare hands was hard work, and Dean tried not to feel emasculated by the fact that Sam, the chin-up junkie with the bulging Arnold Schwarzenegger-biceps, barely broke a sweat.

“So,” Dean puffed, as he watched his brother brush his hair out of his eyes. “If I’m a Ken doll, does that make you Barbie? I mean, you’ve got the hair, right?”

Sam rolled his eyes and pulled a couple of chunks of cake loose, handing one to his brother.  

“Why couldn’t it have been Eat Me pie?” Dean asked before swallowing down the dry, tasteless cake. He watched Sam swallow down a piece too and waited. 

Nothing happened.

“How long’s this supposed to take?”

Sam shrugged. “The Drink Me potion worked straight away. Maybe we need to eat a bit more?”

They ended up eating the entire cake and it didn’t make any difference. Dean picked up a business card-sized note that was tucked inside the case. He read it and then tossed it at Sam with an irritated huff.  “ _Stored May 1946. Cake may be subject to deterioration. Ingestion post 1947 not recommended_.”

Sam had the good grace to look sheepish. “Okay. So I didn’t read the small print.”

“Great,” Dean scowled, “Just great. You know, my memory foam isn’t gonna recognize me like this and G.I. Joe-ing it into the fridge every time we wanna eat is gonna get old real fast. And how long before the crap in our cupboards is ‘not recommended for ingestion?’ How the Hell are we supposed to get more food? And who’s gonna take care of Baby? Goddammit, Sam!” Dean swung an arm. “We’ve got Crowley in the basement, a bunch of damaged angels topside with their tape measures out, Kevin’s drunk, Cas’s God knows where, and we’re _eight freakin’ inches tall_! Reading the small print before going all ‘ _Honey, I shrunk the Winchesters_ ’, would’ve been a good idea, Mr Stanford Law School!”

Dean wondered briefly if Zeke could help them, but he didn’t want to risk calling for the angel. He’d really plumbed the depths of his tattered powers saving Charlie and besides, Sam was already getting suspicious. He was also sporting an epic bitchface.

“Okay, Dean,” he said, arms wide and angry, “next time you’re about to get eaten by a giant spider, I’ll make sure I sit down and read through all the paperwork before I try to save your life!”

Dean stared at him. “We,” he said slowly and clearly, “are eight inches tall. _Eight inches_! And that cake, it was just messing with us: ‘ _Oh, you wanna be big again? Eat me!_ ’.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “So we’ll just have to get some fresh cake.”

Dean frowned. “Where are we gonna get fresh Eat Me cake from?”

“Wonderland,” Sam said. “I have the key.”

\--

Being able to see over the top of crowds; being able to lean right over a pool table to take an awkward shot; being able to take things down from high shelves. Sam hadn’t realized just how much he took being tall for granted until now. He and Dean had spent the last fifteen minutes pushing a chair from the table in the library to the door so that they could reach the door handle, and the effort had left them both sweating. Dean had stubbed his toe twice and Sam was grateful that he’d been shrunk with his boots on. 

Once the chair was in position Dean clambered up onto the padded leather seat. Sam gritted his teeth, bent at the knees and hoisted the thick brass key up off the floor in a smooth clean-and-jerk motion, his biceps bulging and his shirt riding up as he staggered in position with the key held over his head.

 

“Hey Sammy?”

Sam glanced up at Dean. He didn’t like the smirk on his brother’s face, not one bit.

“If there’s a key,” Dean declaimed, throwing his arms out dramatically, “then there has to be a lock!”

“Shut up. At least I didn’t look constipated when I was trying to say my lines!” Sam shoved the key at Dean who wrestled it from his hands with a grunted curse.

“Heavy sonovabitch, ain’t it?”

Sam climbed up beside Dean, who was now leaning nonchalantly against the thigh-high key.  They stared up at the door knob for a while and then Dean cleared his throat.

“So, uh, I figure you can give me a boost up and then I’ll, you know, shove the key in the lock.”

“Dude, it’s _heavy_.”

Dean smirked. “Hey, you aren’t the only one here with muscles. I eat my Wheaties too you know.”

Sam couldn’t help it, he laughed. “No you don’t. You hate Wheaties.”

Dean flashed a genuine grin, his eyes sparkling with warmth. “Yeah, well, you might be the granola-munching hippie with the RoboSam workout routine, but there’s nothin’ wrong with my upper body strength.  Hell, I’ve pinned you to the ground enough times for you to know it.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, so you’re better at hand-to-hand combat. We both know I’m stronger.”

“Right,” Dean nodded. “I can’t lift both you and the key, so,” Dean lifted the key and held it out in front of him. “Boost me up, Sammy!”

Dean dropped the key eight times and fell off of Sam’s linked hands twice. By the time he finally got the key inserted the boys were both bruised and irritable, their muscles straining and their underarms soaked with sweat.  

Dean turned the door knob and then pushed slowly. The door swung open and revealed…

“A freakin’ _garden_? I thought this was s’posed to be Wonderland! This is…” Dean waved his arms around effusively, “this is…”

“Alice’s garden,” said Sam. “It’s where the rabbit hole is.”

\--

To say that Dean was less than thrilled at having to hike across Alice’s garden was an understatement of epic proportions.  The grass was littered with brittle fallen leaves that prickled his feet, and walking past marching columns of ants the size of rats was creepy as hell. The giant-ass length of rope that he and Sam were dragging behind them was awkward and heavy and Dean was just about _done_ with everything being so much harder than it should’ve been. Being the size of a Ken doll sucked balls.

“Dude,” he snarked at Sam, “do you even know where this freakin’ rabbit hole is?”

Sam nodded. “Alice was sitting under a tree by the river bank, reading with her sister, so,” he pointed a long arm toward an oak tree by the brook, “most likely she was sitting there. And then she ran across the field toward the hedge,” Sam pointed out the route Alice would’ve run. “So the rabbit hole should be somewhere under that part of the hedge.”

It took them ten minutes to reach the hedge.  Half way there a huge white butterfly had tried to land on Sam’s head and Sam had screamed like a girl and batted at it with his hands while Dean had laughed and wished like hell he had his cell phone with him so he could take pictures. Even without pictures, he would still be able to tease Sam about this forever.  The hedge itself was creepy. It was home to way too many spider webs, all with ugly fat arachnids the size of cats perched in the center of them, peering out at potential prey with way too many eyes.  Dean shuddered. And then cocked his head when he heard a stuttering kind of meow.

“Dude—”

“Shhh!” Sam raised his arm and pointed. “We’re being stalked.”

There, on the other side of the hedge, visible through the tangled branches and leaves, crouched a charcoal-grey cat with vivid green eyes.

 

Dean dropped the rope and very slowly withdrew the kitchen knife from his waistband.

“Dude!” Sam hissed. “You can’t shank the cat! It’s probably some little kid’s pet. They’d be heartbroken! Besides, look at it! It’s adorable.”

Dean snorted. “We’ll see how adorable you think it is when it’s treating you like a chew toy. It’s a predator Sammy, a ruthless, cold-blooded…why is it shaking its ass like that?”

Sam tilted his head to one side and then his eyes widened. “I think it’s about to—”

The cat sprang and Sam and Dean threw themselves sideways, Sam one way, Dean the other. Dean rolled and rolled and rolled again, before coming up on his knees with his knife at the ready. He was pleased to see Sam mirroring his position on the other side of the cat. The cat, for its part, wasn’t sure which of them to go after and didn’t seem to appreciate the way they weren’t acting like prey. It flattened its ears, lowered its body and hissed—its suddenly very fluffy tail whipping behind it like an angry feather duster.

“Go find the rabbit hole,” Dean told his brother, “I’ll hold off Fluffy here.”

The cat fixed its eyes on Dean and Sam nodded, backing away slowly, picking up the rope and dragging it with him.

Dean met the cat’s eyes and held them; channeling every bit of bad-ass alpha male attitude he’d ever learned in an attempt to scare the cat away. The cat’s eyes were as black as a demon’s and if the way its fur had puffed up all over was any indication, Dean had actually managed to make it angrier. The cat started to yowl, loud and high-pitched and Dean winced and manfully resisted the temptation to cover his ears. Instead, he lunged toward the cat with a William Wallace battle cry, waving the knife in front of him.

The cat didn’t run away like he’d hoped—it leapt at him and, damn, Dean really didn’t want to stab a cat; that was just wrong on so many levels. Instead, he tucked the knife back into his waistband and threw himself at the cat’s feet, causing it to stumble, and then he rolled out from under, yanking its tail as he scrambled to his feet and ran for the hedge.

The cat whirled around, growling menacingly, and gave chase.

“Dean!” Sam was waving at him frantically. “I’ve found the rabbit hole!”

Dean ran at him, the cat in hot pursuit.

“You got the rope fixed?”

“Yeah,” and now that he was closer, Dean could see that the rope was tied to the lower branches of the hedge and dangling down into the hole, “but that’s for coming back up. Don’t worry about it now, just jump!”

“You sure that’s safe?” Dean could smell the fishy breath of the cat coming up behind him.

“Pretty sure,” Sam nodded vigorously.

“Oh that’s comforting,” Dean leapt into the rabbit hole, “Geronimo!”

He felt a rush of air as Sam jumped down behind him and then they were falling.

Really, really slowly.

“The cat’s staking out the rabbit-hole,” Sam said from above him. “It looks pissed.”

“Awesome.”

Dean tried looking straight down, but it was too dark to see anything, so he turned his attention to the sides and was surprised to see maps and pictures and shelves and cupboards.  He reached an arm out and plucked a tin can off one of the shelves as he fell past. “Treacle? What the hell is treacle?”

“I think it’s an English thing, a bit like molasses,” Sam said.

Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude! Were we in England just now? Was that garden in England? That’s freakin’ amazing!”

Sam huffed. “Really, Dean? You’re eight inches tall and slow-falling down a rabbit-hole to Wonderland and the most amazing thing about all that is passing through England on the way?”

Dean put the treacle onto another shelf as he fell past. “Shut up, Sammy.”

“Awesome comeback,” Sam mocked. “No, really.”

Dean decided to ignore him and busied himself pulling random items off shelves and examining them. He saw a jar marked ‘orange marmalade’ and snatched it off the shelf. That was another English thing, some kind of jelly he thought, only when he opened the jar it was empty. He sniffed at the empty jar—very citrusy—before putting it onto another shelf.

“Hey Dean?”

Dean glanced up at Sam; or at Sam’s feet anyway. “What?”

“You remember that summer we spent at Bobby’s? You would’ve been ten, I think? And we found that old copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ and you read it to me, a little bit every night? And sometimes Bobby would read it to both of us?”

“Vaguely,” Dean said. What he mostly remembered about that visit was that his Dad and Bobby had argued because Dad didn’t think that Bobby had made him train hard enough.

“He told me years later,” Sam said, his tone subdued, “that _Alice in Wonderland_ was Karen’s favorite book,” he cleared his throat. “Imagine how stoked he’d be if he knew we were on our way to Wonderland?”

“Yeah,” said Dean, and then he thumped down onto a heap of dry leaves.

“Ouch!” Sam crashed down on top of him. “Sonovabitch! Get off me, dude!”

The boys scrambled to their feet and looked around. There was only one way to go; forward down the dark tunnel in front of them. They walked until they came to a sharp corner and when they turned it they found themselves in a long, low hall. Rows of lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting a soft orange light, just bright enough for the boys to make out the shadowy images of closed doors all around the hall.

“The Hall of Locked Doors,” Sam said. “The glass table should be in here somewhere.”

Dean nodded. “And the cake should be underneath it, right?”

By unspoken agreement they headed in opposite directions around the hall.

“Found the table!” Dean called. “But there’s nothing underneath it!”

“Is there anything on top of it?” Sam called from across the hall.

Dean stood underneath the table and peered up. “Looks like there’s a key up there. You think we have to take the key off the table to make the potion appear and then take the potion off to make the cake appear?”

“Maybe?” Sam materialized by his side. “You think you could climb up there and get it if I gave you a boost?”

Before Dean could answer a loud throat-clearing had them both spinning around, their jaws dropping as they took in the sight before them.

“Dude,” said Dean, “that rabbit isn’t wearing any pants.”

Sam gaped at him. “The weird part, is that it’s wearing a waistcoat and a hunting jacket and carrying a fob watch and a walking cane.”

“Right,” Dean nodded, his eyes wide. “Obviously,” he cleared his throat and ran a hand over his jaw. “But why no pants?”

“Hello?” said the rabbit, “I’m standing right here, you know?”

“Yes,” Dean agreed solemnly, “you are.” He inclined his head toward his brother and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s talking, Sammy.”

“Hi,” Sam stepped forward and offered the rabbit his hand. “I’m Sam. And this is my brother Dean.”

The rabbit stared at him until he dropped his hand.  “Are you mice? You’re odd looking for mice.”

“Um, no. We’re —”

“What are you doing in my burrow?” the rabbit demanded.

“We came for cake,” Dean said.

The rabbit turned his red-eyed gaze on Dean. “I don’t recall inviting any mice to tea. Or are you just passing through on your way to the Mad Hatter’s? He does throw the best Tea Parties, after all.”

“We are not mice!” Sam said quickly, before Dean could inadvertently accept an invitation to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which sounded like the sort of thing that could go really, really badly. “We’re people. Who got shrunk. And we came here to see if we could get some of that Eat Me cake that makes you grow big. Alice wrote—”

The rabbit’s expression brightened.  “You know Alice?”

“Not personally. Did you know her?”

The rabbit shook his head. “But my great, great, great grandfather knew her quite well. So you’re from Alice’s world?”

Sam said that they were and the rabbit asked him if they knew a Haggerty.

“Haggerty? Yeah. He was a Man of Letters, same as us. You know him?”

“My great grandfather did. He visited. Quite obsessed with what he called ‘Other Worlds’, was Haggerty.”

Dean cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “So. Can you help us out with some Eat Me cake?”

“Follow me,” said the rabbit, turning away with a swish of his hunting jacket and padding toward a nearby green door.

Dean grinned. “We’re following the white rabbit, Sammy. I think we’re about to find out just how deep this rabbit-hole really goes!”

\--

The rabbit led them into a very large walk-in pantry, the walls of which were lined, floor-to-ceiling, with shelves. There was a really tall ladder attached to the shelves and the rabbit pulled it across to a section marked ‘magical foodstuffs’ and then climbed, until he was almost out of sight.  A bowl of bright rainbow-colored candy caught Dean’s attention and he stepped toward it, only to be yanked back by his brother.

“Don’t touch anything,” Sam hissed.

“I wasn’t gonna—”

Sam raised one eyebrow and Dean sighed. “Fine,” he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Happy?”

Sam bit at his bottom lip. “It’s just, we’re in Wonderland. And things have a habit of going sideways in Wonderland. I don’t want you to eat a piece of candy and, I dunno, blow up into a giant blueberry or something.”

Dean didn’t bother to point out that they weren’t in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory; he just nodded and fixed his eyes on the ladder.

When the rabbit came back down he had two currant cakes and two small bottles of potion tucked under his arm. He handed them each a cake first and then a bottle. “Just in case you grow too big,” he said. “Alice overdid the cake and grew to 9ft; had to fan herself back down to size.”

“Thanks,” Dean began to unwrap the cake.

“No!” the rabbit shouted, “not here! You’ll never get back out the rabbit hole if you’re the size of a regular man. Alice may have been able to fall down it, but she was a slip of a gal. Go back up top first, and then eat the cake.”

Sam raised a hand. “One small problem with that…we’ve got a cat sitting up there staking out the rabbit hole.”

The rabbit chuckled. “Ah yes, Dinah’s great, great, great granddaughter. She does rather fancy herself as a hunter. Come with me.”

They followed the rabbit out of the pantry, through the hall and back down the tunnel to the bottom of the hole. The rabbit reached out and pushed a button set into the tunnel wall and the whole area lit up.

The rabbit frowned and flicked at the dangling rope. “Yours, I take it?”

Sam agreed that it was.

The rabbit grinned (which was rather scary) and pulled a lever. There was a hydraulic whir and then a section of the tunnel wall opened up and a wooden platform slid out and positioned itself before them.

“It’s an elevator,” the rabbit said helpfully. “Step on board. It’ll shoot you up to the top in no time and when you break the surface it’ll spray water all around and give an air horn blast, scare away that blasted cat. Just remember that you’ll have to jump off quickly.”

“Nice!” Dean approved. “You’re the man!”

“Rabbit.”

“Right.”

The rabbit hustled them on board the platform.  “Hang onto your hats,” he said gleefully. He pulled the lever again and the platform took off, speeding up past the shelves before shooting out into the fresh air of the garden with an almighty shriek. They leapt from the board and Dean watched with satisfaction as the cat fled across the garden.

“Some hunter you are,” he shouted after it. Beside him, Sam was unwrapping his cake and Dean quickly followed suit. They ate small amounts slowly, as a precaution against growing bigger than a house, and kept their eyes peeled for any wandering English folk; but no-one was watching them except the cat.  Dean briefly considered eating a little more cake than he should’ve, just enough to see him grow to 6ft6” because he kind of missed the days when he towered over little Sammy. But in the end it felt a little like cheating and besides, Dean figured that he was awesome just how he was. The cat, he noticed, had frozen low to the ground, its eyes huge, like liquid black orbs.  Dean, now back to his proper height, couldn’t quite resist the temptation to run at it.

“How do you like them apples?” he yelled. “Not quite so much fun when you’re the tiny one, is it?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Quit that,” he said, “before someone calls the ASPCA. Or whatever they call it here.”

“Yeah,” Dean jogged back to his brother’s side. “We should probably get back to the bunker. I’d hate to have to explain how we got here to the British cops.”

Before they’d left the bunker, they’d pushed one leg of the chair into the doorway to prop the door open. Sam had then plucked out one of his longer hairs and, with some sticky tack they’d found in the bottom kitchen drawer, he’d tacked it across the narrow gap in the door, low down. The boys had then crawled through the gap and out into the garden, reasoning that if anything taller and wider than five inches found its way into the bunker, they probably wanted to know about it. Fortunately, when Sam bent down to examine it, the hair was still intact.

“Ah,” said Dean as they shut the door behind them and removed the key. “Home sweet home.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. He re-opened the door, just to make sure that Wonderland had really gone.  “I’m gonna go and put the key back. And put the rest of the cake and the bottles of potion into the Wonderland storage box.”

“Okay,” Dean called after his retreating back. “I’m gonna make us burgers.”

He got a backwards wave in response.

Later, once Dean had grilled up two of the best ever bacon cheeseburgers, hand cut some fries and even made a salad (he still couldn’t get over just how many different types of tomato there were), he piled everything onto a tray and went in search of his brother.

Sam was curled up on a purple leather and mahogany arm chair in the corner of the library reading a slim, brown leather book.

“Dude,” Dean lifted the tray. “Food. Be easier to eat at the table.”

Sam grinned, his eyes soft. “Like I said, 1950s housewife.”

“And like I said, Bitch, I have a wooden spoon and I ain’t afraid to use it. Now let’s eat.”

Sam joined him at the map table, the book still in his hand.

“What are you reading?” Dean asked.

Sam cleared his throat. “It’s uh, Alice’s journal actually. The real Alice. Turns out she was a Hunter. And this story? Definitely not for children.  There’s a lot of drug use,” Sam rolled his eyes, “and you really don’t wanna know what she got up to with that caterpillar, man. Anyway, Alice was actually hunting for some kind of dimension hopping monster who was kidnapping and abusing prostitutes. She tracked him to Wonderland but couldn’t manage to, uh, bring him to justice because he was from a powerful family. Twenty or so years later he was back in London and active again, and this time he was killing. Alice tracked him back to Wonderland again and confronted his family with the evidence of his crimes and this time, his family had him executed. You know, off with his head.”

“Wow,” Dean spoke around a mouthful of burger, lettuce spilling from his mouth. “Definitely not a Disney movie. So we’re talkin’ about the Jack of Hearts, right? He stole some tarts?”

Sam nodded. “Also known as Jack the Ripper.”

“Holy shit!” Dean gaped. “So how did Lewis Carroll end up with the _Alice in Wonderland_ story?”

Sam was chewing on his burger with a blissful look on his face. “Oh man, this is really good, Dean.”

Dean’s face brightened. “I know, right?”

Sam swallowed. “Charles Dodgson, which is Lewis Carroll’s real name, he met Alice at a party and after a few too many tokes on the opium pipe, she told him about her experiences in Wonderland. He told a G-rated version of the story to the children of some friends of his a couple of weeks later, one of whom was also called Alice, and she asked him to write it down. The rest, as they say, is history.”

They finished their burgers in silence, Sam holding Alice’s journal in one hand and sniggering occasionally.  The burgers were followed by Mississippi Mud pie and Sam rolled his eyes at the porn noises Dean made while he ate his portion.  Finally, Sam pushed back from his plate and yawned, rubbing a hand across his suddenly drooping eyelids.

“You feelin’ okay, Sammy?”

“Just a little tired; no more than usual.”

“Okay,” Dean got to his feet. “I’m gonna go and check on Kevin, make sure the slippery nipple shots at the Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede didn’t kill the guy. You should take it easy. It ain’t been long since the trials, and there’s no telling what all that shrinking and growing’s done to you.”

Sam agreed that he’d take it easy and once Dean had left, he wandered across to the book shelves and searched for something to lose himself in for the rest of the evening. Right on the very top shelf he spotted _The Earthsea Trilogy_. He reached for it with a smile and promised himself that never again would he take being tall for granted.

**_The End_ **


End file.
